So I almost made it through my first week of retirement feeling good about everything but a couple of days ago some unease reared its head. I thought I might be missing social interactions at work so I went to see my friend Linda. Linda showed me her system for getting things done – basically a notebook and a way to separate out long term and daily tasks. That was good but didn’t really solve my problem. Upon closer self-examination, I think my problem is that I haven’t learned to relax and be OK with nothing going on! This is another thing to practice getting good at!
It wasn’t too long ago that I read an article by Iwo Zaniewski on social media that purported to explain an algorithm for visual harmony:
∀ei ∈ Sn C(ei, Sn\ei) = Cmax (Sn)
Now the article was long and since social media rather encourages short attention spans I just started skimming it. As an artist, I was interested to read enough to get what I think was the gist of it: For every element in your composition, you want to maximize the contrast between that and the other elements. Maybe this is where my recent interest in painting things with strong shadows came from. Anyway, in this latest painting I am working on, I am again exploring shadows and light. It was an interesting challenge painting the face completely in shadow, then adding the points of light. Two times during cherry blossom season I tried to get out there and paint them in person, but got rained out both times. So I’m working on this in the studio from a photo I took of beautiful granddaughter number two.
Yesterday was an absolutely beautiful day so I decided to paint a landscape at Marshall Hall. In Piscataway National Park, Marshall Hall is the site of the ruined colonial house of George Washington’s doctor. Others may remember it at as a one-time amusement park. Anyway, the scene attracted me because of the high contrast shadows under the trees. After a couple of hours this is what I ended up with. i
I wasn’t really satisfied with it because it seems like the values aren’t quite right in the near tree. Also that tree is not as “present” as in needs to be. So I’m not quite happy with the painting but I also had thoughts that just the practice of doing it brings you closer to a future successful painting. I’ll either try to fix it a little or paint over it. It’s all a learning process! While I was painting, I had people stop by and complement it or at least complement me for making the attempt. One lady watched me a while and said her mother used to paint. I saw then that the end product painting of a painting session is not the only way you can please people, that just giving people a chance to see you doing it can make them happy. We need active pursuits – or at least to be able to see others being active. Plein air painting is a great one because it combines being outdoors, looking at attractive scenery and producing something. You just need a small travel easel, some paints (I used six colors here) and brushes, and a surface. If the perfect picture doesn’t show up now – it’s there in the future, waiting for you at another painting session.
Welcome to my new blog which I decided to start on my first real day of retirement. So I’m not a ‘retiree’, I’m a ‘lifestyle blogger’! I will post thoughts here that will help myself and others navigate this period that is filled with so much incredible potential.
Goodbye to Work
Since I am so new to this status as a non worker, I will include a complex diagram I made a while back to navigate the pitfalls of work. You see there is a breakthrough space at the top that I have achieved via a recent retirement! But even before breakthrough, the diagram points to the importance of looking for positives. Work is like everything – full of contrasts where the dark and light sides compete and it is the individuals’ responsibility to make the most of it! The Abraham-Hicks Emotional Guidance Scale that shows up in the center of the diagram was a key survival tool for my best friend at the office and myself. If we noticed ourselves going over to the left we worked to push ourselves over to the scale on the right. Survival came down to living this work life we had as a kind of game. As philosopher Alan Watts puts it, life “must be lived in the spirit of play rather than work, and the conflicts which it involves must be carried on in the realization that no species, or party to a game, can survive without its natural antagonists, its beloved enemies, its indispensable opponents.” I’m not sure who the natural antagonists will be at this next stage, but I am grateful for the experience gained that will help me move forward no matter what is encountered!
